ewis, in 1816, at Coligny, translated most of it to
me _viva voce_, and I was naturally much struck with it; but it was
the _Steinbach_ and the _Jungfrau_, and something else, much more
than Faustus, that made me write Manfred. The first scene, however,
and that of Faustus are very similar. Acknowledge this letter.

"Yours ever.

"P.S. I have received _Ivanhoe_;--_good_. Pray send me some
tooth-powder and tincture of myrrh, by _Waite_, &c. Ricciardetto
should have been _translated literally, or not at all_. As to
puffing _Whistlecraft_, it _won't_ do. I'll tell you why some day
or other. Cornwall's a poet, but spoilt by the detestable schools
of the day. Mrs. Hemans is a poet also, but too stiltified and
apostrophic,--and quite wrong. Men died calmly before the Christian
era, and since, without Christianity: witness the Romans, and,
lately, Thistlewood, Sandt, and Lovel--_men who ought to have been
weighed down with their crimes, even had they believed_. A deathbed
is a matter of nerves and constitution, and not of religion.
Voltaire was frightened, Frederick of Prussia not: Christians the
same, according to their strength rather than their creed. What
does H * * H * * mean by his stanza? which is octave got drunk or
gone mad. He ought to have his ears boxed with Thor's hammer for
rhyming so fantastically."

* * * * *

The following is the article from Goethe's "Kunst und Alterthum,"
enclosed in this letter. The grave confidence with which the venerable
critic traces the fancies of his brother poet to real persons and
events, making no difficulty even of a double murder at Florence to
furnish grounds for his theory, affords an amusing instance of the
disposition so prevalent throughout Europe, to picture Byron as a man of
marvels and mysteries, as well in his life as his poetry. To these
exaggerated, or wholly false notions of him, the numerous fictions
palmed upon the world of his romantic tours and wonderful adventures in
places he never saw, and with persons that never existed[75], have, no
doubt, considerably contributed; and the consequence is, so utterly out
of truth and nature are the representations of his life and character
long current upon the Continent, that it may be questioned whether the
real "flesh and blood" hero of these pages,--the social,
practical-minded, and, w